Insiders who know the Clintons say that their M.O. is that when things go against them, they always blame others. For all I know that might be an effective strategy for ambitious and successful people of a certain mental slant. There's no question that the Clintons are ambitious. And there's no question that they have been on the whole successful, not withstanding Tuesday's loss.

But I was reminded of a scene from the wonderful novel by C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.Some of the novel is set in Hell. it's not an orthodox Catholic burning hell. But it's still not a very nice place. It's denizens spend much of their time in self-created loneliness, stewing in bitterness or anger about this or that - which is of course at least one of the reasons why they're there.

One of the characters mentions that he thought one of the consolations of Hell would be that he would meet interesting people. The problem is that while Hell includes many people who were "interesting" in life, in Hell they often turn out to be much less interesting.

‘The nearest of those old ones is Napoleon. We know that because two chaps made the journey to see him. They’d started long before I came, of course, but I was there when they came back.’ ….

‘But they got there?’

‘That’s right. He’d built himself a huge house all in the Empire style—rows of windows flaming with light….’

‘Did they see Napoleon?’

‘That’s right. They went up and looked through one of the windows. Napoleon was there all right.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘Walking up and down—up and down all the time— left-right, left-right—never stopping for a moment. The two chaps watched him for about a year and he never rested. And muttering to himself all the time. “It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English.” Like that all the time. Never stopped for a moment. A little, fat man and he looked kind of tired. But he didn’t seem able to stop it.’